At times overwhelming in scope and pace, the new film Mooz-lum offers a new twist on a familiar tale of tolerance.

Mooz-lum, a thoughtful new drama written and directed by first-timer Qasim “Q” Basir, manages to dress the age-old story of father-and-son conflict in new garb. It opens with a warm scene between an African-American Muslim father, Hassan (Roger Guenveur Smith), and his son, Tariq (Evan Ross), in prayer, but that domestic tranquillity is quickly lost. As Tariq drives off to college, we realize that he longs to leave his father’s religious rituals behind, as he throws his kufi — his last symbolic connection to his father, and therefore Islam — out the window.

Before we can understand why Tariq, who insists at college that his new name is “T,” refuses his father’s doctrine of being a good Muslim, the film teaches us what it means to be Muslim, black and a man in pre-9/11 America. Through a series of flashbacks, we are transported to various stages of Tariq’s life: him hiding his kufi at his public middle school; his father’s unilateral choice to send him to a school for Muslim boys so that he can become a hafiz, a person who has memorized the entire Quran; his parents’ divorce because of his father’s religious dogma; and the reluctance of his mother, Safiyah (wonderfully played by Nia Long), to let him leave for boarding school.

Unfortunately for Tariq, although Safiyah breaks free from Hassan’s domineering spirit, she cannot or will not rescue her son. She sadly tells the young Tariq, “You need a man in your life in order to become one.” In this sense, Mooz-lum pays homage to the more recent film Traitor, starring Don Cheadle, and Spike Lee’s 1992 classic, Malcolm X, with Denzel Washington (and Roger Guenveur Smith). The central conflict of the three films is a deeply personal one: How do African-American men, already cultural outsiders, live in America as good Muslims, too?

But that is where the similarities stop, because Mooz-lum is also a movie about community. The most popular professor at Tariq’s college, which is set in Michigan, home to the second-largest Arab population outside the Middle East, is an African-American Muslim, Professor Jamal (Dorian Missick), who teaches a course on world religions.

Part mentor, part teacher, Professor Jamal offers Tariq (and us, for that matter) a more favorable image of religious tolerance and faith. He is the foil not only to Hassan but also to Dean Francis (Danny Glover), who is prone to making insensitive remarks about Islam, including mistakenly calling people “mooz-lum,” and whose dogma about fundraising seems to rival that of any religious or racist zealot in the movie.

Dogma, religious or social, seems to be the ultimate villain in this film. The movie sometimes suggests too easy an equivalence — or, rather, moral symmetry — between Muslims who use intimidation to inspire fellow Muslims to be more devoted to their faith and those who threaten Muslim Americans for being different.

While Ross plays the part of the disillusioned and damaged son with a quiet conviction, his character is sometimes overshadowed by the enormity of the plot itself. The varied conflicts, personal and political, familial and national, are overwhelming at times, making Mooz-lum more like Do the Right Thing (lynch mob and all) than the more subtle Malcolm X.

Perhaps this is because the uniqueness of Bashir’s story line required so many contexts. Bashir tasks himself with not only teaching acceptance but also demonstrating the negative consequences of ignorance. Enter 9/11. Three-quarters into the film and a tad too late, the Twin Towers fall; Tariq’s pious Arab-American roommate, Hamza (Kunal Sharma), is a victim of a hate crime; and Tariq’s sister, Taqua (Kimberley Drummond), goes missing.

Somehow the film retains its tension, even as the plot, perhaps unavoidably, is overwhelmed by all of the moral quandaries and personal conflicts. For the most part, though, Bashir offers us a fresh, new perspective. As a young director, he seems unable to resist pulling out all the cinema tricks — flashbacks, didacticism, stock imagery and a closing montage.

But more compelling are his representations of Muslim women, both African American and Arab American, who seem to be the most spiritually fulfilled and socially comfortable characters in the film. Perhaps as an answer to the oversimplified critique of sexism and Islam, Bashir imbues Tariq’s mother and sister and his roommate’s girlfriend, Iman (Summer Bishil), with freedom and the ability to move easily between the sacred and the secular.

But ultimately, this is a movie about fathers and sons on one hand and forgiveness and finding faith on the other. Mooz-lum is a new twist on the familiar narrative of tolerance. But by the end of the movie, which concludes shortly after the events of 9/11, the viewer gets the sneaking suspicion that Tariq’s turn outward to his family and friends might be the best protection he has against a country that is about to turn more and more inward — and where being Muslim American has a whole new set of consequences.

Salamishah Tillet is an assistant professor of English and Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania, author of the forthcoming Peculiar Citizenship: Slavery and the Post-Civil Rights Imagination and co-founder of the nonprofit organization A Long Walk Home, Inc. Follow her on Twitter.

"O mankind! We created you from
a single (pair) of male and female,
and made you into nations and tribes,
that you may know and cooperate with one another."

- (Quran 49:13)

I am as My servant thinks I am. I am with him when he makes mention of Me. If he makes mention of Me to himself, I make mention of him to Myself; and if he makes mention of Me in an assembly, I make mention of him in an assembly better than it. And if he draws near to Me an arm's length, I draw near to him a fathom's length. And if he comes to Me walking, I go to him at speed.

- Hadith Qudsi

Whosoever shows enmity to someone devoted to Me, I shall be at war with him. My servant draws not near to Me with anything more loved by Me than the religious duties I have enjoined upon him, and My servant continues to draw near to Me with supererogatory works so that I shall love him. When I love him I am his hearing with which he hears, his seeing with which he sees, his hand with which he strikes and his foot with which he walks. Were he to ask [something] of Me, I would surely give it to him, and were he to ask Me for refuge, I would surely grant him it. I do not hesitate about anything as much as I hesitate about [seizing] the soul of My faithful servant: he hates death and I hate hurting him.

- Bukhari

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New YouTube channel to help borderline Muslims overcome concerns they may have about embracing Islam.

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

-- William Shakespeare

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The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

“The Islamic teachings have left great traditions for equitable and gentle dealings and behavior, and inspire people with nobility and tolerance. These are human teachings of the highest order and at the same time practicable. These teachings brought into existence a society in which hard-heartedness and collective oppression and injustice were the least as compared with all other societies preceding it….Islam is replete with gentleness, courtesy, and fraternity.”

“I have always held the religion of Muhammad in high estimation because of its wonderful vitality. It is the only religion which appears to me to possess that assimilating capacity to the changing phase of existence which can make itself appeal to every age. I have studied him - the wonderful man and in my opinion far from being an anti-Christ, he must be called the Savior of Humanity.”

Rania rides shotgun in the Gaza Strip.
At thirty meters, she watches a sharp-shooter
cut down a stone-thrower with a single round.
The soldier’s bullet teaches the boy a lesson
his mother will never forget.

- Dennis J. Bernstein
"Rania's Ambulance"

He made the Hereafter an abode to reward His believing servants only because this world cannot contain what He wishes to bestow upon them and because He deemed their worth too high to reward them in a world without permanence.

I will not
dance to your war
drum. I will
not lend my soul nor
my bones to your war
drum. I will
not dance to your
beating. I know that beat.
It is lifeless. I know
intimately that skin
you are hitting. It
was alive once
hunted stolen
stretched. I will
not dance to your drummed
up war. I will not pop
spin beak for you. I
will not hate for you or
even hate you. I will
not kill for you. Especially
I will not die
for you. I will not mourn
the dead with murder nor
suicide. I will not side
with you nor dance to bombs
because everyone else is
dancing. Everyone can be
wrong. Life is a right not
collateral or casual. I
will not forget where
I come from. I
will craft my own drum. Gather my beloved
near and our chanting
will be dancing. Our
humming will be drumming. I
will not be played. I
will not lend my name
nor my rhythm to your
beat. I will dance
and resist and dance and
persist and dance. This heartbeat is louder than
death. Your war drum ain’t
louder than this breath.

- Suheir Hammad

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In the summer
I stretch out on the shore
And think of you
Had I told the sea
What I felt for you
It would have left its shores,
Its shells,
Its fish,
And followed me.